Addressing Climate Change through Innovation: The Challenges Ahead

Jose Palacin

No 2009_3, UNECE Annual Report Economic Essays from UNECE

Abstract: A key component of climate change mitigation efforts will be the need to develop new technological solutions and to diffuse current state-of-the-art technologies to developing countries. However, due to a number of market failures, the required research and technological transfers are currently not being undertaken. The essay discusses how what has been learned about promoting innovation policies at the general level can be applied to the specific challenges in the environmental area. It stresses the need to establish the proper regulatory and institutional frameworks as a precondition for attracting funding into these activities. More specifically, there is a current need to set a realistic price for carbon emissions that will provide an important financial incentive for firms to invest in mitigation technologies. The issue of finding finance for often long-term and risky environmental projects is likely to become especially difficult due to the 2008 financial crisis.

Keywords: Climate change; global warming; innovation; finance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G24 G38 Q50 Q52 Q54 Q58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 8 pages
Date: 2009-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene and nep-env
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Published in United Nations ECE 2009 Annual Report

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http://www.unece.org/fileadmin/DAM/oes/nutshell/20 ... ChangeInnovation.pdf First version, 2009 (application/pdf)

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